


One-Woman War

by red_as_ever



Series: Guns for Hire AU (the "Night-line") [2]
Category: Red vs. Blue
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-19
Updated: 2015-01-27
Packaged: 2018-03-08 07:34:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3200819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/red_as_ever/pseuds/red_as_ever
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Before she joined the Guns for Hire, Texas was someone else. Who? She doesn't remember, and she's determined to find out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Dallas knows this facility. Or, at least, a similar innocuous clinic in the front with a laboratory in the back. However many of those there are in Gulch. Something in the air smells familiar, though—not the antiseptic. Too generic. The air freshener? Strange, the things she remembers after one year away.

She walks the white-tiled floor, her boots tapping at every step, and she can’t help feeling that she belongs here. She did, once. She’s sure someone would like her to be again.

Who? Well. That’s what she has come to learn.

She wears black now instead of clinical white that would match the walls, the floor, the lights. Doesn’t care that she no longer matches. She never liked hospital garb anyway. These clothes fit close—everything but the scarf that billows from her shoulders. It distracts anyone who’s looking from the rifle slung over her back.

Her fingers itch toward it now. She suspects the security guard ahead might object, though. He’s been watching from his desk at the middle of the hall since she came in from the main clinc. “I’m sorry, you aren’t allowed back here,” he says.

“It’s okay. I’ll be quick.” She strides around the desk, helmet poised on her hip away from him.

He reaches to stop her. “Miss, I—“ She grabs him and throws him to the wall. Smacks his head against it once more for good measure. He falls limp. She rolls him over and checks his jacket for ID. He has it attached to his lapel, but it’s a low-clearance card. Fine then.

“Thanks for giving up your seat,” she says. Sidling behind the desk, she sits at the computer to queue up the identification program. A few quick keystrokes and she has an ID card activated—only a visitor’s card, considering she doesn’t have the passwords for it. It’ll have to do. Better than the guard’s ID, which only works in emergencies. She tests this one on the double doors at the back. The scanner pings and the lock clicks open.

“Perfect.” She slips into another white hallway, this one far skinnier than she remembers. The air smells less sterile here, heavier with a chemical musk to it. Her lip stings where it touches her split lip from yesterday. Frowning, she fits her helmet in place.

The hallway here splits in three directions. To her left and right, the doors match the simple white ones out in the clinic proper, down to the round doorknobs and plain ID scanners. According to the signs, the last two are staircases. Dallas tests her card on the first door to the right. Nothing. At least it doesn’t set off any alarms.

But in the middle hallway, the four doors are stainless steel with thick bolts, bulky as airlocks. Do any of them lead outside? She doesn’t remember. Considering the glowing ports of holographic locks beside the bolts, though, she doubts it. A visitor’s pass isn’t going to get her through either.

That doesn’t stop her from going to the first of the doors and touching the seal. She knows what’s beyond the door. Why can she not remember?

A door clicks open. Rounding the corner, she catches a doctor emerging from one of the rooms. Dallas grabs the woman by the collar. “Who’s in charge here?” she demands, pitching her voice intentionally deep. The doctor might not remember a scared little girl, but Dallas would rather not take that risk.

“I—I am.”

“Then who’s in charge of you?” She pulls the woman’s helmet up to hers.

“The Director!”

The name reverberates in her ears. A flaw in the sound system? “Director who?” she asks.

“He doesn’t give his name,” she says.

“Don’t lie to me!” 

“I don’t know!” she insists.

Dallas groans. “I don’t have time for this.” She’ll find more information in the office. Snarling, she grabs the doctor’s arm and hauls her inside. 

The illumination in here comes not from the ceiling but from the back wall. Light filters in through translucent glass. In the glow, Dallas spots a desk, a bank of computers, a chair just to the right of the door. She shoves the other woman into it.

Dallas is about to order her to sign into the computer when she glimpses something in the other room. Nothing moves. Nothing’s in there, just a hospital bed at the back.

No. There it is again. A shimmer in the glass. The reflection of the woman moving. Too late Dallas catches her triggering the alarm. Sirens blare before she can get her hands on her rifle.

“You!” She punches her hard enough to splinter the visor. Doesn’t stop to check her vitals, just runs before guards come flooding out of the basement. She could fight her way out. She knows it. Yet her instincts at her scream to flee.

Because she remembers this. The claxons in the ceiling, frantic footsteps on white tile. Men with guns who won’t shoot her. No; this time they will. She’s not a child. She’s a threat.

And, despite having finally broken in, she still doesn’t understand why.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Before she joined the Guns for Hire, Texas was someone else. Who? She doesn't remember, and she's determined to find out.
> 
> Chapter 2: Texas suffers no fools. Usually. But when one stumbles into her search, she might just coerce him to join up with her.

An hour later she’s parked her motorcycle outside an old apartment building. She has a saferoom upstairs, one she hasn’t visited in months that can’t be traced back to her. Not that anyone is following her. She had a long time to watch the roads behind her.

And a long time to think about her break-in. How little she learned, how much she blew that mission. She needed to get into those computers, to find whatever data and information she could. About this “Director,” about herself, about everything that had happened that she just couldn’t remember.

She could hire a thief. Being a mercenary means she has access to them. Still, she hasn’t met any she would trust. Not with this information. A job this personal couldn’t go to a stranger.

So: if she doesn’t want to abandon her objective, she has to either meet a thief she can trust, or she has to learn how to break in herself. The thought pursues her down the dark city streets; only when she escapes into the apartment upstairs and burrows into the blankets does she finally banish it to the back of her mind.

She wakes to the sound of shuffling in the kitchen, to faint light peeking under the door. To someone else in her safehouse. Hoping the mattress won't creak, she rolls out of bed. She reaches not for her gun but for the heavy-duty flashlight beside her bed. No reason to wake the neighbors, not when she can take someone out with this just as easily. 

She stops outside the kitchen so her eyes can adjust. Only the dim light above the stove has been activated, so it doesn't take long. She discerns the shape of a MK-5 helmet on the counter across from her. Not surprising, given the sound of someone stuffing their face with her food. The noises muffle the sound of her footprints. She gets behind him and has a hand on his shoulder before he knows she’s there.

He drops the can and spins, fist swinging at her face. She’s so surprised that he manages to slip free. He stumbles across the kitchen, catching himself on the table and breaking for the door without so much as glancing at his helmet. She leaps at him, tackles him to the linoleum floor with force that knocks the wind out of him. Before he can breathe again, she’s flipped him over, straddling him and pinning his arms to his sides with her knees. 

“Who sent you?” She demands. One hand tangles in his hair, holding his head steady while the other shines he flashlight in his eyes. Crying out, he tries to throw her. She digs her knees harder into his hands. “Who sent you?”

He clamps his eyes shut against the light. “Sent me? No one!”

She twists her hand harder in his hair. Yelping, he continues, “No one! I thought this place was abandoned. I just wanted food!”

She lowers the flashlight an inch. Remembers her own hunger, so soon after she broke out. Considers. 

He cracks open his eyes. She sees tears forming. More importantly, she notices sauce smeared across his face, something canned that he didn’t bother to heat up. His breath reeks of meat and onions. 

“Too bad for you, it’s not,” she says. “So what am I going to do with you?”

He tenses beneath her. Real panic fills those eyes. He even whimpers, so much like a kicked dog. The dim light exaggerates cheekbones made hollow by hunger.

“How’d you get in?” she asks.

“Let myself in,” he says.

“The lock is encrypted.”

“The code got leaked a month ago,” he says. “Didn’t you update it?”

She scowls at him. No, she didn’t, because she doesn’t actually own this place. “And how would you know about that?”

“I’m a locksmith. It’s my job,” he says, shrugging.

“Which is why you’re stealing food from me.”

“Okay. Was my job,” he admits.

Dallas sits back on her haunches; he grunts beneath her. She considers this strange young man. The opportunity he presents if she has him in her debt. 

“Got a name?” she asks.

“Albany?” The hesitation suggests to her that it isn’t his first name. She’s fine with that; she can relate. 

“You good with computers?” she asks.

“Good enough,” he says. 

“I’ve got a deal for you,” she says. “I’m going to get off you. Either you get out before I contact the authorities—“ She feels him shudder beneath her—“or you get up. I feed you something warm. You eat, you sleep on my couch. And tomorrow, you come with me on a job.” No one will expect her to fit the facility again so soon. They can be in and out in an evening.

“I don’t suppose you work in sales,” he says.

She climbs off of him. “No. It’s your call.” The flashlight still illuminates his chest. His brow furrows, and though he smiles, trepidation darkens his eyes.

“I don’t suppose you have any crackers to go with that soup?” he asks.

Sighing, she climbs off of him. “Sit,” she says, indicating the table with her flashlight. “And keep your hands where I can see them.”

“Hey, take it easy,” he says. “I told you. I’m here for the food.” He climbs to his feet, rubbing his wrists where she pressed her weight against them. His hands stay on the tabletop as requested. Only then does she turn to scour the cupboards for a pan and the aforementioned crackers.

Albany is true to his word: while the soup warms, his chair doesn’t so much as creak. Not even when she produces a sleeve of thin crackers, still sealed in their plastic. Looking back, she sees him watching her, sleepy eyes forced wide with determination. He trusts her about as much she does him. Deep down, she doubted that the promise of a meal would be enough to win him over. Yet when the soup is done and she brings it to him, he starts shoveling it in his face before she can set the bowl on the table.

“Hot!” he yelps, but he doesn’t stop eating.

She pulls the bowl away. “Slow down. You’re embarrassing yourself.”

He pouts at her, spoon still held at the ready. He probably would have reached for the bowl again, but she shoots him her best warning look. 

Really, she doesn’t understand why he would injure himself over food. But then, she hasn’t known hunger. Even before, they were determined to keep up her strength. At least, as much of those times as she can remember.

Some things she does recall. The training, the routines, everything that prepared her to be a mercenary. To fight, to kill, to survive. To ultimately break away from them, though she doubts they appreciated that.

She gives Albany back his soup. She may never have known hunger, but she knew desperation. And maybe she knows loneliness now. Just a little. She wouldn’t admit it but for the fond, exasperated smile she catches twitching at the corners of her mouth. Something about Albany’s starved recklessness charms her, really.

Dallas forces the smile away. “Clean up when you’re done,” she says. “Then sleep. We’re leaving early.”

Albany swallows a mouthful of vegetables. “Where are we going?”

Just because he charms her doesn’t mean she trusts him. “You’ll see,” she says.


End file.
